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1/23/13

The Toronto Raptors for the first time this season face the defending World Champion Miami Heat. This of course means a couple of things. Lebron James is on the other side of the court, love him or hate him the best player in the game today in the eyes of almost everyone. It also means Chris Bosh returns to face his former team that he was once the centrepiece of the Toronto Raptors.

Chris Bosh is still the same guy he was in Toronto, we just don’t find or accept his antics as funny anymore. Recently he was part of a karaoke contest and he won it. Doing a rather amusing Barry White number complete with costume and fake moustache.

If he did this same thing back in his days in Toronto, most would laugh. Praise and point out the event (Which was put on by Shane Battier) was for charity. It would have been painted as yet another isn't Chris Bosh a "good guy" stories.

In reality maybe Chris Bosh hasn’t changed at all and maybe it is us who have changed in how we feel about him. He obviously did a poor job in his exit from Toronto. Even if he still refuses to admit that, he has to know that he did. That said, was the reason he left wrong? Look at the Raptors currently and it is hard to debate that he was. In fact I think he was right and in the same position can not say I would not have done the exact same thing.

Before all the Tweeting of should I stay or go ever found its way to social media, it was a basic simple point that Chris Bosh was correct about. In order to be a true contender in the NBA a team must venture beyond the tax-threshold. Something the Raptors never did when he was here. Sure they got guys like J.O and Hedo and a list of others to try to surround him with. However they never made that major investment in building the team around him.

Will get back to Bosh is a second but this leads to Lebron James. He was an angry man on Twitter about the sale of the Sacramento Kings. No they are not named after him, but they did sell for a ton of money. This caused Lebron James to wonder what the heck the point of the NBA lockout was about when you could sell a team for a reported 525 million bucks.

So the Kings getting sold for 525M!! And the owners ain't making no money huh? What the hell we have a lookout for. Get the hell out of here
— LeBron James (@KingJames) January 21, 2013

I actually agree with James but not for the same reason. James may make a valid point about the stability of the league from a money point of view.You can debate both sides of that argument and not come up with a clear right answer. That said is he right on his point? I think he is to a degree. That said, why I agree with his statement about why the heck was there a lockout in the first place is for another reason.

I say why did we have a lockout? Based on the failure of delivering on a promise of competitive balance being established in this league. The creation of the team in Miami with James, Wade and Bosh was the biggest blow to competitive balance prior to the lockout. Since we have seen a league of have and have not’s in this league. Not that it always works out as we have seen with the mess in L.A with the Lakers this season. The lockout did absolutely nothing to bring competitive balance to the NBA.

This leads us back to Chris Bosh who likes Vince Carter and others before him had lost faith in management of the Toronto Raptors. While we could ignore or deny that, by taking glee in the fact that guys like Carter and McGrady never found success elsewhere in winning a championship. Bosh however, did get his championship dream likely a year later than he thought it would happen but he did.

At the end of the day the Toronto Raptors are owned by a group that has the resources to be and act like a big market franchise and chooses not to take advantage of that. They are only willing to spend to a certain point on the roster. Ask yourself the question if the Toronto Maple Leafs were playing under the NBA system and CBA would they be a tax team? Would they spend the most money possible to try and put a winner on the ice? The answer is pretty clear that they would. That is not to say it would end up in a success. You still need the right people spending money on the right people to win.

The Raptors have been a complete joke and failure since Chris Bosh left. You can debate and argue about how that all came to be, but it is ultimately the truth. Andrea Bargnani is not as good a player as Chris Bosh was with the Raptors. Bosh was an all-star talent and Bargnani isn’t. You can debate Bosh’s merits as a leader and build a strong case he isn’t one. That said Vince Carter wasn’t either but the franchise surrounded him with guys that were. It led to the only real success this franchise has had for the most part.

So maybe when we boo guys like Carter, McGrady and Bosh we really should be booing the people that ultimately have failed. It isn’t them, it is the people that own this franchise.

As for the game tonight’s matchup with Miami it is self explanatory. Miami has won all 8 games since James and Bosh joined Wade in Miami. The streak is 9 games dating back prior to that. This is not going to be close and if it is than it likely will be more about what the Heat fail to do rather than what the Raptors do well. That is much the case of the Raptors win over the Lakers.

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